Company laptop HP Compaq 6710b, NTFS on hd0, Win7 installed.
BIOS allows boot from USB drive, so wanted to use Ubuntu with no influence on laptop (no disconnecting internal drive, no dual boot, etc).
Performed an install from CD to an USB drive making a JFS partition mounted on / and a swap partition. The installer made the JFS partition bootable (boot flag is set) as I asked.
On first boot I got:

error: hd0 out of disk.
grub rescue>

Any advice welcome! I'm absolute newbie, this is my first Linux install ever. So please write slowly and articulated...

Rebooted from CD and examined the jfs partition with Disk Utility. Can't mount the partition: "filesystem driver not loaded".

Repeated the installation process, this time made an ext4 partition instead of jfs, now on boot I get:

error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue>_

Huhh...
Ubuntu was reported to be gentle to newbies to Linux word, I can't imagine how are other distros...
In last hours I performed over a dozen clean installs of the 11.04 to an external usb drive but couldn't manage to boot from it.
I consulted manual, googled the net, followed pendrivelinux's and other advices, varied partitioning and filesystems but Ubuntu failed to boot.
I've encountered 'non system disk', 'unknown file system', 'out of disk', etc messages.
Comparing to this struggle, installing Windows is a walk in the park.
Please, help a little as I wonder, how Ubuntu is.

Are you using the most recent release of Ubuntu, 11.04?
When you installed Ubuntu, did you install the bootloader to the master boot record of the external drive?
Is this an external hard drive or a flash/usb?
Can you post partition information? Use the installation CD, boot it up and click the Applications tab on the Desktop, look for terminal and enter: sudo fdisk -l (lower case Letter L).

Perhaps the most recent release, I've downloaded it today from ubuntu.com and it says 11.04

During installation I don't let the installer handle the partititons, so at the question 'What do you want to do?' I choose the last option, the 'some other' option and deal manually with partitions.
I see my two devices, sda with NTFS partitions and sdb, where I play. I make one big partition, flag it bootable and a small for swap. Finally I select this device as target for installing boot loader. I'm a little confused, whether to select the device sdb itself or partition sdb1?
Then I give time zone, user profile, etc. information, admire the beautiful slideshow and finally read the message that Ubuntu has been succesfully installed. Great, but it won't never load...

The external usb device is a 2.5" Western Digital 250 GB hard disk.

The partition information as fdisk reports:

============================================================
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc0492a6b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 14391 115488768 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 14391 14594 1627136 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001a74e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 29178 234372253+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 29179 30401 9823747+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$
================================================================


This particular example as above gives a "Non system disk" error at boot.

If you have windows 7 on sda and put Ubuntu on sdb on your partition there, you will need to install the Grub bootloader to sdb, to the master boot record of that drive. If you do not do that, you will not be able to boot Ubuntu unless you put an entry in the windows 7 bootloader pointing to your Ubuntu partition on the other drive. I don't know of any windows software that can do that(??) but there is third party software, EasyBCD which can be downloaded to windows 7 desktop and configured.

Do you get the non-system disk error when you have sdb (the Ubuntu drive) set to first boot priority?
Do you know how to mount partitions from the Ubuntu Live CD to look at sdb1 and see what you have in the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file? If not post back.

Yancek, thank you for helping me!

The boot order in BIOS is set to: CD -> USB -> HDD

My concept is to leave sda totally intact, so I would prefer not to edit MBR there.

Meanwhile I took a deep breath and selected second install option: to install Ubuntu along Windows. Now I have a better result: the system (almost) loads from USB and - praise God - W7 is intact, boots seamlessly when I disconnect USB drive.

Although all I get is a grub (but not rescue) console. There is some legend on the top of the screen about the role of Tab key and a grub> prompt.

I booted again from CD, mounted sdb1 and checked grub.cfg. I've attached it to this post (adding a .txt to filename to cheat forum engine)

Attached Files

grub.cfg.txt (4.3 KB, 17 views)

It would be more help if you would, from your live session, download and run this script and post the entire results text here.
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/

This is a great, well maintained script that give all the boot related info on your box.

You are, for future reference, a lot safer to create the partitions you want with gparted from live session and then install using the "manual" option when you get to the partitioning part of installation. You just point the installer to the partition(s) you created and give the mount point (/, /home, etc) and let it roll. There is less chance of a screw up on install this way. They are rare with the auto install options but they do happen.

Thanks widget for informations! What a great script! Linux gets more and more impressive to me as I go further...

Results attached. Hope it helps to fix my problem and I can forget Live (slow) mode.

Attached Files

RESULTS.txt (12.7 KB, 19 views)

The only thing that concerns me, and I hope it is not a script error (I have never had one before), is that the MBR on sdb seems to baffle the script. Your menu items look fine so I do not think that Grub itself is corrupted.

To check that possibility and to get that MBR straight we need to run some code on your new install. The only way to do that is to chroot in.
I was going to give you a link to simple instructions for this procedure but Ubuntu is changing the site. This is a great place for information on Grub2;
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
Written mostly by drs305 (user name on the UFs) who was one of us in 9.10 testing to get grub2 thrown in our laps with no documentation. That was FUN. He has done a bang up job of creating good documentation.

Back to your problem. You need to be on your Live CD Live Session. Pull up the terminal Applications>Accessories>Terminal and;
This should put you in command of your Ubuntu install on sdb1. Then;
This is a slightly different command than I usually use but I believe it is the recommended one.

After that it would be good to run that script again and go to the part that is gibberish on your current one and see if it has changed.

If it has try rebooting. If it has not post the results here (I would like to see them in either case really) and we will do the next thing.

One thing I would like to know is if you can turn off your sda drive in your bios. This makes it really safe to mess with grub on a different drive if we have to fool with it more. The way you have it set now is the way we want it for now, I am just wondering for future reference.

I haven't tried it myself yet, but I saw that someone else got around a problem like this (on an HP NC6400) by using the alternate installation disk: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubunt...ative-download

I worked around the same problem with an HP NC6400 by simply updating the BIOS to the latest version.
It may be that the 250GB HD I had installed was larger than the original BIOS really supported.
I did not need to use the alternate install disk as written above.

Thank you widget for your instructions, but I went a little further meanwhile.

I switched to W7, dropped all partitions from my external drive, booted a Live session and performed again an install with option 'Install Ubuntu alongside Windows'.

And this time install seems to work!

Just one small inconvenience. I get the expected grub menu. Select first item. Than the message 'hd0 out of disk' and 'press any key' appears. But pressing any key the boot starts and graphical login screen arrives. I can live with that.

Thank you all helping me, now I can make my first steps in the Linux world. A small step for a man...

I am glad it worked but it is too bad you didn't install manually. I would have recommended a 2 partition installation as that is easier to work with if you ever have a problem.

You are on hd1 with grub installed on sdb still? If so that warning would be due to you bios KNOWING that you should be booting from sda. I still think that it is weird to get that message.

You could, when in your Ubuntu OS do;
and then;
this will not hurt anything and may cause that error message to go away.

Booting different drives and different formats is always a little touchy. Grub does a pretty good job of it. The installer does a fair job of
getting it right. There is nothing that beats being in the install that is supplying the grub files to make sure that everything is just right.

Really happy I could help. I like the new grub a lot.

I issued the
commands. The update found linux, initrd, memtest and win7 images and made a new grub.cfg file. The install reported, there were no errors.

All this resulted in having Ubuntu lost. At reboot there is again the legend about the Tab key and a grub console with blinking cursor.